Brent Spar: Year In Review 1995

During 1995 an abandoned North Sea oil-storage platform known as Brent Spar was at the centre of an international dispute over the safe disposal of waste material. In the spring, members of the environmental group Greenpeace occupied Brent Spar for 23 days to protest the proposed sinking of the rig by its owner, the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. The British government was criticized at the North Sea Protection Conference, held in June in Esbjerg, Den., for granting permission for the platform to be towed from the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and sunk in the 2,000-m (6,560-ft)-deep North Feni Ridge, which is part of the Rockall Trough and well clear of the continental shelf. The row erupted again later in June at the Group of Seven summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, when German Chancellor Helmut Kohl raised the subject with British Prime Minister John Major, and other German ministers discussed it with their British counterparts.

The controversy continued as part of a well-publicized Greenpeace campaign. Its vessel Altair shadowed the platform as it moved north of the Shetland Islands, and on June 16 two activists boarded it by helicopter. Solo, a 66-m (218-ft) Greenpeace tug with a helicopter landing pad was also sent into the area. Environmentalists picketed Shell gasoline stations internationally, and in Germany six shots were fired at a Shell station outside Frankfurt and a Hamburg station was firebombed. Shell sales fell 15-20% in Germany. British, Danish, Dutch, and Swiss Shell stations were also picketed. The British government supported Shell, but the company backed down and said the platform would be dismantled on land. In July the Norwegian government agreed to store it for up to a year while Shell found a way to dispose of it, and the platform was taken to Erfjord, a deep inlet on Norway’s west coast.

As the year progressed, however, the issue proved to be more complex than first thought. Most scientists actually favoured deep-sea disposal, regarding disposal on land as more difficult and potentially environmentally hazardous. At a parliamentary briefing in July, John Krebs, director of the Natural Environment Research Council, said the platform contained 68,000 metric tons of concrete ballast chemically similar to rust, 100 tons of bituminous sludge, 30 tons of low-level radioactive scale, and small amounts of heavy metals and polychlorinated biphenyls, which would pose a negligible threat to marine life. Greenpeace had claimed that the platform contained some 5,000 tons of crude oil mixed with radioactive waste and other contaminants. On September 5, Greenpeace admitted its assessment had been incorrect and issued a public apology to Shell. In October an independent study confirmed Shell’s original assessment. By year’s end, the fate of Brent Spar remained undecided, but the possibility of deep-sea disposal had not been abandoned. Michael Allaby

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